It seems like every day I find one more reason to call email the ultimate marketing tool - and today is no different.

eWayDirect announced a new email marketing tool which caught my attention. The solution enables companies’ email subscribers to create personal social networks residing in a branded community center with easy access to the sponsoring company’s website. Sounds pretty cool, huh?

Consumers who take advantage of eWayDirect’s social community technology can create their own social networks for sharing content, photos and files and invite friends, family and business associates to join. Each member’s network includes prominent branding and links to the sponsoring company’s website. By leveraging the social community technology tool (available as an integrated component of the eWayDirect email marketing platform or as a stand-alone product) marketers might just be able to increase opt-ins, revenues and search engine rankings through the activity within and content on the portal.

The individual communities ultimately serve as a portal to the sponsor’s (eWayDirect clients) online products and services. That means an additional source of incremental revenues from clickthroughs to the sponsor’s site, a source of new opt-in email subscribers through the viral power of friending, and a search engine optimization (SEO) tool via member-created content that links back to the site.

“Our new social network tool set offers a new strategy to help companies acquire new prospects and customers, improve customer retention, receive customer feedback, and generate incremental revenue,” said Neil Rosen, CEO of eWayDirect. “At the same time, it is an extension of our integrated platform approach offering new subscriber transition programs, targeted and triggered email messages, social networks, and website re-engagement in one low-cost solution. No other vendor has these capabilities.”